[UA] Alternative madness system

[Tim Groth]

Mind is also less raw intellect and more general cognitive facilities—which
would include rationalization and integration of shocking events. Someone
who handles shock well with a Mind of 70, a solid paradigm skill, and a low
academic type skills would be collected, rational, and able to cope with the
world but not necessarily more intelligent than someone with Mind 60 and all
their skills sunk into an academic skill and related ones.

Working within four stats and no bolting on new system items, I'd say Mind
works the best—mostly because it is the sensible place to put a Paradigm
skill.

If I were making a minor system tweak I would probably steal an idea from
this RPG.net thread on social mechanics:
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?t=559662

The basic premise is that the player decides how hard it is to make a social
roll against their character, but is saddled with that decision. Applying
that to Madness checks, when presented with a sub-type of Trigger (Torture
in Violence say, or Demons in the Unnatural) you set the Failed/Hardend
divide (fleshing out the character's phobias, hang-ups, and so on). Paradigm
skills can work the way they do without problem. Some people will be better
at handling most types of Violence but rubbish at all Self stresses, and so
on.

Always going for Hardened notches has the sociopath problem, but to further
disadvantage the choice of 100% resistance, make half the Hardened chance
set by the player the floor for the character's checks in therapy to help
deal with that gauge's issues. Therapy can also break down that hang-up,
making the individual more willing to work on the issue but also more
vulnerable to that stress: they acknowledge that part of them and
become susceptible to stress from it unhinging them.

An example: a character is locked in a dark room with no way out or any
source of light. They are looking at an Isolation and a Helplessness
check—the GM hits them with Helplessness first, the impossibility of escape
hits before the loneliness. The player decides there's a 50-50 chance of the
guy losing it there—the confinement is not a particular trigger for him, but
it is unsettling. He makes it and takes a Hardened notch. When the Isolation
finally hits him, he decides he's got only a 20% chance of being Hardened to
it—the guy is really social, and being cut off from people is hard for him.
He flips out—but therapy is going to be pretty easy on the issue.

It involves more book keeping, but it is all character defining book
keeping. You can make it per gauge instead of per trigger type within gauge
to fuel it or you can allow only one or two exceptions per gauge.

On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 8:59 AM, Chris Cooper <insectking at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Also, the four stats are each divided to accommodate different aspects of
> the game: Body = health, Speed = combat and Soul = magic.
>
> Besides knowing a few highly intelligent people and some highly creative
> people, the coin-tosses tend to favour the intelligent but that doesn't mean
> they are free of brain foibles.
>
> C.
>
>
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