Insanity Campaign - Need Help With Structure - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Insanity Campaign - Need Help With Structure

Post/Author/DateTime Post
#1
onecrunk
Nov 27, 2008 22:52:59 Greetings everyone,

I'm looking to start a new Eberron campaign soon revolving around deja vu and surreal situations.

Example: The party sets off to purge a ruined village of its zombie inhabitants. Upon returning, no one knows of the city the party was sent to purge or the party returns to an open field where their town once stood with no signs of foul play.

I want to give the sense that the party or members of the party are slowly going insane. I'm wondering about the best way to go about this.
#2
namer_and_shaper
Nov 28, 2008 12:21:01 Sounds like you've already got it!
How about them finding a mystical sword once owned by a paladin that can talk...except, only the party can hear it, and when they talk to npc's it tells them all their sins. All the sins are terrible, everyone is a murderer, a thief, a devil worshiper.

Hmm, oh! How about them taking on a mission from a cleric of Nice God 23 and the party defeats the threat. When they get back the cleric is dead.
Do this with everyone they work for. Someone is hunting down those around them.

Have monsters move openly within towns and cities, if the party attacks them the other townsfolk come to there aid. If they kill the monster it's corpse transforms into a member of the town.

Every clock in the world is wrong.
#3
doomsought
Nov 28, 2008 17:30:31 In unearthed arcana, and the D20 srd, there are rules for sanity.
Th creepy events thread.
#4
a_strange_aeon
Nov 28, 2008 23:41:17 It sounds like you're on the right track and there's been some good suggestions. How do you ultimately see the campaign ending? Are the characters insane? Is someone trying to make them think they are?

If things are just too mysterious, the players might get frustrated, especially if there's no real in character way for them to figure out what the heck's going on. The more subtle and gradually you bring the signs of insanity on, the more powerful the end result will be--one thing you can highlight might be how you describe certain places to the players vs how an NPC might describe a place.

For instance, the local ranger might say there's a beautiful rock formation a few miles outside of town in the desert, but when the players arrive there you describe it in a sinister way, with there being some kind of clouded vague darkness surrounding it. At first, the party might just think the ranger guy has weird taste, but when normal people consistently see things in different ways than the players do, they might start figuring out something is up.
#5
frostden
Nov 29, 2008 6:20:10 First up, there's a big problem with insanity. It's out of the sufferers hands. It's unpredictable and illogical and uncontrollable. It's basically everything that can make an excellent movie or book, but a terrible rule based world to make relevant, logical cause and effect style decisions in. If you are DMing a world where the players are crazy, then you can say any dice they roll is anything you want. They are after all crazy, and detached from reality.

In a nutshell, it would be death to a role playing game. The most rigid sort of railroading.

If you wanted to go with an insanity theme, it would have to be subtle, pervasive, and consistent.
The way I would do it would be to pick a mental illness for each character, or one for the entire party. Colour their interactions with the world with the mental illness you have chosen, and gradually ramp up the degree of warpedness as the campaign goes on.

The big psychological diseases are depression, mania, schitzophrenia, and anxiety.

A schitzophrenic is divorced from reality and experiences hallucinations.. Whenever this character is separated from the party, present them with an NPC. This NPC will give the player good advice, and be generally believable and trustworthy. He will clue the player on to a conspiracy, which will be proven at every turn (as it has to be, even though it is false. The character who is interpretting the evidence is detached from reality, so everything will support the conspiracy). Take the benign facts of the world you've given them, and present them as irrifutable proof of conspiracy.
The manic character is unsupressably happy. Make the outcomes positive beyond belief. In mania, you are extactic regardless of your actual circumstances. Use positive reinforcement to bad ideas and situations to lead the player into a terrible situation. Give them rose tinted information to lead them to make bad decision after bad decision, spiralling into a hopeless scenario.
Depression is unpleasant, so I wouldn't recomend including it. For the depressed character, present the world as a bleak, hopeless place. Give him the same rewards as everyone else, but present them with a caveat that puts a negative spin on them. Social interactions should be coloured the same way. The problem here would be that the player could end up being downcast about the campaign.
Anxiety disorders include phobias and obsessive compulsive disorder, and are tricky in the same way as depression in that they are acutely unpleasant to experience (because insight is maintained. You don't realise that you are schitzophrenic or manic, but you know if you're depressed or anxious). I wouldn't recommend taking this route. I would present this as making every sitation seem more dangerous than it really is, and encouraging the player to avoid the stressful stimulous. For straight up anxiety, play up the negatives of situations, heavily foreshadow social encounters as being very dangerous, and punish players for going throug with them.
OCD is all about magical thinking. Tell the player about short rituals to avoid harm or bring benefits. Ramp up the harms and benefits, and watch them OCD out.
#6
seraphinvert
Nov 30, 2008 21:37:13 I think one of the best ways to get to players is to target them one at a time.

All I try to do is mess with my players, make them second guess everything they think is the right choice.

Such as:

Write a small note for one of the players that reads something along the lines of;

"You hear a voice screaming in absolute pain in the distance. After a second you find the voice to be (party members name)."

Now that player looks at you and waits for you to tell the other players, but you don't. Now he has to decide if he wants the other players thinking hes crazy, or if he wants to take the chance of finding out too late what the cause of the voice was.

It's a great tool to make players who typically don't roleplay actually get into their character.
______________________________________________________________

A great book in 3.5 for this was "heros of horror". That book has some great ideas for this style of play.

The biggest thing I want to stress is focus. This kind of campaign only works if the players are never sidetracked by OOC talk. A lot of the time I ended up with some of my less focused players just skipping over strange things thinking they might have the missed the explanations.

Anyways I hate making long posts so I'm sorry if you read all this rambling!
#7
onecrunk
Dec 01, 2008 6:16:27
First up, there's a big problem with insanity. It's out of the sufferers hands. It's unpredictable and illogical and uncontrollable. It's basically everything that can make an excellent movie or book, but a terrible rule based world to make relevant, logical cause and effect style decisions in. If you are DMing a world where the players are crazy, then you can say any dice they roll is anything you want. They are after all crazy, and detached from reality.

My choice of words may have been off. I'm not out to take control of their rolls or anything. Just to make them second guess things and give an all around creepiness.

Every clock in the world is wrong.

I like this. When a player checks the clock, they notice it has extra numbers or the numbers are in the wrong order. Taking a second look and they're normal again.

What I'm hoping to do is have the whole thing take place in a relatively small area. A city, countryside, and a small town. I have a layout but still need to come up for a reason this is happening. I'm thinking about having an NPC that keeps coming up that acts insane but sees everything as it is. Catching him would be a problem as he disappears once the players lose sight of him, like the door shuts behind him and the PCs find the room empty.

I also want to warp reality if a PC gets separated from the group. The PC opens a door to a wealthy house to find it completely run down and decrepit inside. If they step out and look back in, it's beautifully furnished.

________________________________________

I should also take the time to thank everyone for their help.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 onecrunk Nov 27, 2008 22:52:59	Greetings everyone, I'm looking to start a new Eberron campaign soon revolving around deja vu and surreal situations. Example: The party sets off to purge a ruined village of its zombie inhabitants. Upon returning, no one knows of the city the party was sent to purge or the party returns to an open field where their town once stood with no signs of foul play. I want to give the sense that the party or members of the party are slowly going insane. I'm wondering about the best way to go about this.
#2 namer_and_shaper Nov 28, 2008 12:21:01	Sounds like you've already got it! How about them finding a mystical sword once owned by a paladin that can talk...except, only the party can hear it, and when they talk to npc's it tells them all their sins. All the sins are terrible, everyone is a murderer, a thief, a devil worshiper. Hmm, oh! How about them taking on a mission from a cleric of Nice God 23 and the party defeats the threat. When they get back the cleric is dead. Do this with everyone they work for. Someone is hunting down those around them. Have monsters move openly within towns and cities, if the party attacks them the other townsfolk come to there aid. If they kill the monster it's corpse transforms into a member of the town. Every clock in the world is wrong.
#3 doomsought Nov 28, 2008 17:30:31	In unearthed arcana, and the D20 srd, there are rules for sanity. Th creepy events thread.
#4 a_strange_aeon Nov 28, 2008 23:41:17	It sounds like you're on the right track and there's been some good suggestions. How do you ultimately see the campaign ending? Are the characters insane? Is someone trying to make them think they are? If things are just too mysterious, the players might get frustrated, especially if there's no real in character way for them to figure out what the heck's going on. The more subtle and gradually you bring the signs of insanity on, the more powerful the end result will be--one thing you can highlight might be how you describe certain places to the players vs how an NPC might describe a place. For instance, the local ranger might say there's a beautiful rock formation a few miles outside of town in the desert, but when the players arrive there you describe it in a sinister way, with there being some kind of clouded vague darkness surrounding it. At first, the party might just think the ranger guy has weird taste, but when normal people consistently see things in different ways than the players do, they might start figuring out something is up.
#5 frostden Nov 29, 2008 6:20:10	First up, there's a big problem with insanity. It's out of the sufferers hands. It's unpredictable and illogical and uncontrollable. It's basically everything that can make an excellent movie or book, but a terrible rule based world to make relevant, logical cause and effect style decisions in. If you are DMing a world where the players are crazy, then you can say any dice they roll is anything you want. They are after all crazy, and detached from reality. In a nutshell, it would be death to a role playing game. The most rigid sort of railroading. If you wanted to go with an insanity theme, it would have to be subtle, pervasive, and consistent. The way I would do it would be to pick a mental illness for each character, or one for the entire party. Colour their interactions with the world with the mental illness you have chosen, and gradually ramp up the degree of warpedness as the campaign goes on. The big psychological diseases are depression, mania, schitzophrenia, and anxiety. A schitzophrenic is divorced from reality and experiences hallucinations.. Whenever this character is separated from the party, present them with an NPC. This NPC will give the player good advice, and be generally believable and trustworthy. He will clue the player on to a conspiracy, which will be proven at every turn (as it has to be, even though it is false. The character who is interpretting the evidence is detached from reality, so everything will support the conspiracy). Take the benign facts of the world you've given them, and present them as irrifutable proof of conspiracy. The manic character is unsupressably happy. Make the outcomes positive beyond belief. In mania, you are extactic regardless of your actual circumstances. Use positive reinforcement to bad ideas and situations to lead the player into a terrible situation. Give them rose tinted information to lead them to make bad decision after bad decision, spiralling into a hopeless scenario. Depression is unpleasant, so I wouldn't recomend including it. For the depressed character, present the world as a bleak, hopeless place. Give him the same rewards as everyone else, but present them with a caveat that puts a negative spin on them. Social interactions should be coloured the same way. The problem here would be that the player could end up being downcast about the campaign. Anxiety disorders include phobias and obsessive compulsive disorder, and are tricky in the same way as depression in that they are acutely unpleasant to experience (because insight is maintained. You don't realise that you are schitzophrenic or manic, but you know if you're depressed or anxious). I wouldn't recommend taking this route. I would present this as making every sitation seem more dangerous than it really is, and encouraging the player to avoid the stressful stimulous. For straight up anxiety, play up the negatives of situations, heavily foreshadow social encounters as being very dangerous, and punish players for going throug with them. OCD is all about magical thinking. Tell the player about short rituals to avoid harm or bring benefits. Ramp up the harms and benefits, and watch them OCD out.
#6 seraphinvert Nov 30, 2008 21:37:13	I think one of the best ways to get to players is to target them one at a time. All I try to do is mess with my players, make them second guess everything they think is the right choice. Such as: Write a small note for one of the players that reads something along the lines of; "You hear a voice screaming in absolute pain in the distance. After a second you find the voice to be (party members name)." Now that player looks at you and waits for you to tell the other players, but you don't. Now he has to decide if he wants the other players thinking hes crazy, or if he wants to take the chance of finding out too late what the cause of the voice was. It's a great tool to make players who typically don't roleplay actually get into their character. ______________________________________________________________ A great book in 3.5 for this was "heros of horror". That book has some great ideas for this style of play. The biggest thing I want to stress is focus. This kind of campaign only works if the players are never sidetracked by OOC talk. A lot of the time I ended up with some of my less focused players just skipping over strange things thinking they might have the missed the explanations. Anyways I hate making long posts so I'm sorry if you read all this rambling!
#7 onecrunk Dec 01, 2008 6:16:27	First up, there's a big problem with insanity. It's out of the sufferers hands. It's unpredictable and illogical and uncontrollable. It's basically everything that can make an excellent movie or book, but a terrible rule based world to make relevant, logical cause and effect style decisions in. If you are DMing a world where the players are crazy, then you can say any dice they roll is anything you want. They are after all crazy, and detached from reality. My choice of words may have been off. I'm not out to take control of their rolls or anything. Just to make them second guess things and give an all around creepiness. Every clock in the world is wrong. I like this. When a player checks the clock, they notice it has extra numbers or the numbers are in the wrong order. Taking a second look and they're normal again. What I'm hoping to do is have the whole thing take place in a relatively small area. A city, countryside, and a small town. I have a layout but still need to come up for a reason this is happening. I'm thinking about having an NPC that keeps coming up that acts insane but sees everything as it is. Catching him would be a problem as he disappears once the players lose sight of him, like the door shuts behind him and the PCs find the room empty. I also want to warp reality if a PC gets separated from the group. The PC opens a door to a wealthy house to find it completely run down and decrepit inside. If they step out and look back in, it's beautifully furnished. ________________________________________ I should also take the time to thank everyone for their help.