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0Any questions regarding mechanics and/or any of the posts here should be posted in the OOC thread.
Edited by Law, 18 January 2010 - 03:05 PM.
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#1
Posted 18 January 2010 - 03:05 PM
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This thread will contain a description of any special mechanics the game will be using. To start, the only special rules you need to know are the rules for Sanity. If the players stick with the game, however, and want to advance or want create their own characters, I will post additional rules for that here.
Any questions regarding mechanics and/or any of the posts here should be posted in the OOC thread.
Any questions regarding mechanics and/or any of the posts here should be posted in the OOC thread.
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#2
Posted 18 January 2010 - 05:27 PM
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Sanity:
Characters in this game gain a new attribute called Sanity (San). This statistic functions like an ability score in some ways, but it has its own unique mechanics that represent the character’s descent from a stable and healthy mental state into confusion, dementia, and mental instability. As a character encounters monsters, witnesses horrible acts, masters forbidden knowledge, or casts spells, his Sanity score, and his corresponding ability to function as a normal member of his race, deteriorates. This gradual descent is balanced in part by the powers that characters gain each time they overcome a horrific foe or grow in skill and expertise, but even as those characters grow in power, they know or fear that an even greater peril lies ahead—the threat of becoming permanently insane.
Sanity Points
Sanity points measure the stability of a character’s mind. This attribute provides a way to define the sanity inherent in a character, the most stability a character can ever have, and the current level of sane rationality that a character preserves, even after numerous shocks and horrid revelations.
Sanity is measured in two ways: starting Sanity and current Sanity.
Starting Sanity
A character’s starting Sanity equals his Wisdom score multiplied by 5. This score represents a starting character’s current Sanity, as well as the upper limit of Sanity. After creation, a character’s current Sanity often fluctuates considerably and might never again match starting Sanity. Current Sanity, however, does not change if Wisdom rises or falls.
Current Sanity
A character’s current Sanity score fluctuates almost as often as (and sometimes much more often than) his hit points.
Making a Sanity Check
When a character encounters a gruesome, unnatural, or supernatural situation, the GM may require the player to make a Sanity check using percentile dice (d%). The check succeeds if the result is equal to or less than the character’s current Sanity.
On a successful check, the character either loses no Sanity points or loses only a minimal amount. On an unsuccessful check, the character loses greater amounts of sanity.
In most cases, a new Sanity-shaking confrontation requires a new Sanity check. However, the GM always gets to decide when characters make Sanity checks. Confronting several horribly mangled corpses at one time or in rapid succession may call for just one Sanity check, while the same corpses encountered singly over the course of several game hours may require separate checks.
Going Insane
Losing more than a few Sanity points may cause a character to go insane, as described below. If a character’s Sanity score drops to 0 or lower, she begins the quick slide into permanent insanity. Each round, the character loses another point of Sanity. Once a character’s Sanity score reaches -10, she is hopelessly, incurably insane. The Heal skill can be used to stabilize a character on the threshold of permanent insanity.
A GM’s description of a Sanity-shaking situation should always justify the threat to a character’s well-being. Thus, a horde of frothing rats is horrifying, while a single ordinary rat usually is not (unless the character has an appropriate phobia, of course).
Loss Of Sanity
Characters ordinarily lose Sanity in a few types of circumstances: when encountering something unimaginable or when suffering a severe shock.
Types Of Insanity
Character insanity is induced by a swift succession of shocking experiences or ghastly revelations.
Horrifying encounters can result in one of three states of mental unbalance: temporary, indefinite, and permanent insanity. The first two, temporary insanity and indefinite insanity, can be cured. The third, permanent insanity, results when a character’s Sanity points are reduced to -10 or lower. This condition cannot be cured.
Temporary Insanity
Whenever a character loses Sanity points equal to one-half her Wisdom score from a single episode of Sanity loss, she has experienced enough of a shock that the GM must ask for a Sanity check. If the check fails, the character realizes the full significance of what she saw or experienced and goes temporarily insane. If the check succeeds, the character does not go insane, but she may not clearly remember what she experienced (a trick the mind plays to protect itself).
Temporary insanity might last for a few minutes or a few days. Perhaps the character acquires a phobia or fetish befitting the situation, faints, becomes hysterical, or suffers nervous twitches, but she can still respond rationally enough to run away or hide from a threat. In such cases the GM will describe the duration and the GM and player will decided on an appropriate insanity effect.
Successful application of the Heal skill may alleviate or erase temporary insanity.
Temporary insanity ends either when the duration has elapsed, or earlier if the GM considers it appropriate to do so.
After an episode of temporary insanity ends, traces or even profound evidence of the experience should remain. No reason exists why, for instance, a phobia should depart from someone’s mind as quickly as a soldier draws his weapon. What remains behind after a brief episode of temporary insanity should exert a pervasive influence on the character. The character may still be a bit batty, but her conscious mind once again runs the show.
Indefinite Insanity
If a character loses 20% (one-fifth) or more of her current Sanity points in the space of 1 hour, she goes indefinitely insane. The GM judges when the impact of events calls for such a measure. Some GMs never apply the concept to more than the result of a single roll, since this state can remove characters from play for extended periods. An episode of indefinite insanity lasts for 1d6 game months (or as the GM dictates). Symptoms of indefinite insanity may not be immediately apparent (which may give the GM additional time to decide what the effects of such a bout of insanity might be).
In such cases the GM and the player will work together to select what form a character’s indefinite insanity takes.
The state of indefinite insanity is encompassing and incapacitating. For instance, a schizophrenic may be able to walk the streets while babbling and gesticulating, find rudimentary shelter, and beg for enough food to survive, but most of the business of the mind has departed into itself: She cannot fully interact with friends, family, and acquaintances. Conversation, cooperation, and all sense of personal regard have vanished from her psyche.
It is possible for characters with indefinite insanity to continue to be played as active characters, depending on the form their madness takes. The character may still attempt to stumble madly through the rest of an adventure. However, with her weakened grasp on reality, she is most likely a danger to herself and others . . . though fun as hell to play.
Characters suffering from indefinite insanity are in limbo, unable to help themselves or others. The Heal skill can be used to restore Sanity points during this period, but the underlying insanity remains.
After recovery, a victim retains definite traces of madness. For example, even though a character knows he is no longer insane, she might be deathly afraid of going to sleep if her insanity manifested itself in the form of terrifying nightmares. The character is in control of her actions, but the experience of insanity has changed her, perhaps forever.
Permanent Insanity
A character whose Sanity score falls to -10 goes permanently insane. The character becomes an NPC under the control of the Game Master.
A character with permanent insanity may be reduced to a raving lunatic or may be outwardly indistinguishable from a normal person; either way, she is inwardly corrupted by the pursuit of knowledge and power. Some of the most dangerous cultists in the world are characters who have become permanently insane, been corrupted by forbidden knowledge, and “gone over to the other side.”
A character who has gone permanently insane can never be normal again. She is forever lost in her own world. This need not mean a lifetime locked away from society, merely that the character has retreated so far from reality that normal mental functions can never be restored. She might be able to lead, within restricted bounds, a more or less normal life if kept away from the stimulus that triggers strong responses in her individual case. Yet a relapse may come quickly. Her calm facade can be destroyed in seconds if even the smallest reminder of what it was that drove her mad disturbs her fragile equilibrium. In any event, the eventual fate of a permanently insane character is a matter for individual Game Masters and players to decide.
Gaining Or Recovering Sanity
A character’s Sanity score can increase during the events of a campaign.
Level Advancement
A character’s current Sanity can become higher than her starting Sanity as a result of gained levels: Whenever a character gains a new level, she rolls 1d6 and adds the result to her current Sanity.
Story Awards
The GM may also decide to award increases in character’s current Sanity if they foil a great horror, a demonic plan, or some other nefarious enterprise.
The Heal Skill And Mental Treatment
The Sanity rules presented here provide a new use for the Heal skill, allowing trained healers to help characters recover lost Sanity points. The DC and effect of a Heal check made to restore lost Sanity depend on whether the therapist is trying to offer immediate care or long-term care.
Immediate Care
When someone suffers an episode of temporary insanity, a therapist can bring him out of it—calming his terror, snapping him out of his stupor, or doing whatever else is needed to restore the patient to the state she was in before the temporary insanity—by making a DC 15 Heal check as a full-round action.
A therapist can also use immediate care to stabilize the Sanity score of a character whose current Sanity is between -1 and -9. On a successful DC 15 check (requiring a full-round action), the character’s Sanity score improves to 0.
Long-Term Care
Providing long-term care means treating a mentally disturbed person for a day or more in a place away from stress and distractions. A therapist must spend 1d4 hours per day doing nothing but talking to the patient. If the therapist makes a DC 20 Heal check at the end of this time, the patient recovers 1 Sanity point. A therapist can tend up to six patients at a time; each patient beyond the first adds 1 hour to the total time per day that must be devoted to therapy. The check must be made each day for each patient. A roll of 1 on any of these Heal checks indicates that the patient loses 1 point of Sanity that day, as she regresses mentally due to horrors suddenly remembered.
Characters in this game gain a new attribute called Sanity (San). This statistic functions like an ability score in some ways, but it has its own unique mechanics that represent the character’s descent from a stable and healthy mental state into confusion, dementia, and mental instability. As a character encounters monsters, witnesses horrible acts, masters forbidden knowledge, or casts spells, his Sanity score, and his corresponding ability to function as a normal member of his race, deteriorates. This gradual descent is balanced in part by the powers that characters gain each time they overcome a horrific foe or grow in skill and expertise, but even as those characters grow in power, they know or fear that an even greater peril lies ahead—the threat of becoming permanently insane.
Sanity Points
Sanity points measure the stability of a character’s mind. This attribute provides a way to define the sanity inherent in a character, the most stability a character can ever have, and the current level of sane rationality that a character preserves, even after numerous shocks and horrid revelations.
Sanity is measured in two ways: starting Sanity and current Sanity.
Starting Sanity
A character’s starting Sanity equals his Wisdom score multiplied by 5. This score represents a starting character’s current Sanity, as well as the upper limit of Sanity. After creation, a character’s current Sanity often fluctuates considerably and might never again match starting Sanity. Current Sanity, however, does not change if Wisdom rises or falls.
Current Sanity
A character’s current Sanity score fluctuates almost as often as (and sometimes much more often than) his hit points.
Making a Sanity Check
When a character encounters a gruesome, unnatural, or supernatural situation, the GM may require the player to make a Sanity check using percentile dice (d%). The check succeeds if the result is equal to or less than the character’s current Sanity.
On a successful check, the character either loses no Sanity points or loses only a minimal amount. On an unsuccessful check, the character loses greater amounts of sanity.
In most cases, a new Sanity-shaking confrontation requires a new Sanity check. However, the GM always gets to decide when characters make Sanity checks. Confronting several horribly mangled corpses at one time or in rapid succession may call for just one Sanity check, while the same corpses encountered singly over the course of several game hours may require separate checks.
Going Insane
Losing more than a few Sanity points may cause a character to go insane, as described below. If a character’s Sanity score drops to 0 or lower, she begins the quick slide into permanent insanity. Each round, the character loses another point of Sanity. Once a character’s Sanity score reaches -10, she is hopelessly, incurably insane. The Heal skill can be used to stabilize a character on the threshold of permanent insanity.
A GM’s description of a Sanity-shaking situation should always justify the threat to a character’s well-being. Thus, a horde of frothing rats is horrifying, while a single ordinary rat usually is not (unless the character has an appropriate phobia, of course).
Loss Of Sanity
Characters ordinarily lose Sanity in a few types of circumstances: when encountering something unimaginable or when suffering a severe shock.
Types Of Insanity
Character insanity is induced by a swift succession of shocking experiences or ghastly revelations.
Horrifying encounters can result in one of three states of mental unbalance: temporary, indefinite, and permanent insanity. The first two, temporary insanity and indefinite insanity, can be cured. The third, permanent insanity, results when a character’s Sanity points are reduced to -10 or lower. This condition cannot be cured.
Temporary Insanity
Whenever a character loses Sanity points equal to one-half her Wisdom score from a single episode of Sanity loss, she has experienced enough of a shock that the GM must ask for a Sanity check. If the check fails, the character realizes the full significance of what she saw or experienced and goes temporarily insane. If the check succeeds, the character does not go insane, but she may not clearly remember what she experienced (a trick the mind plays to protect itself).
Temporary insanity might last for a few minutes or a few days. Perhaps the character acquires a phobia or fetish befitting the situation, faints, becomes hysterical, or suffers nervous twitches, but she can still respond rationally enough to run away or hide from a threat. In such cases the GM will describe the duration and the GM and player will decided on an appropriate insanity effect.
Successful application of the Heal skill may alleviate or erase temporary insanity.
Temporary insanity ends either when the duration has elapsed, or earlier if the GM considers it appropriate to do so.
After an episode of temporary insanity ends, traces or even profound evidence of the experience should remain. No reason exists why, for instance, a phobia should depart from someone’s mind as quickly as a soldier draws his weapon. What remains behind after a brief episode of temporary insanity should exert a pervasive influence on the character. The character may still be a bit batty, but her conscious mind once again runs the show.
Indefinite Insanity
If a character loses 20% (one-fifth) or more of her current Sanity points in the space of 1 hour, she goes indefinitely insane. The GM judges when the impact of events calls for such a measure. Some GMs never apply the concept to more than the result of a single roll, since this state can remove characters from play for extended periods. An episode of indefinite insanity lasts for 1d6 game months (or as the GM dictates). Symptoms of indefinite insanity may not be immediately apparent (which may give the GM additional time to decide what the effects of such a bout of insanity might be).
In such cases the GM and the player will work together to select what form a character’s indefinite insanity takes.
The state of indefinite insanity is encompassing and incapacitating. For instance, a schizophrenic may be able to walk the streets while babbling and gesticulating, find rudimentary shelter, and beg for enough food to survive, but most of the business of the mind has departed into itself: She cannot fully interact with friends, family, and acquaintances. Conversation, cooperation, and all sense of personal regard have vanished from her psyche.
It is possible for characters with indefinite insanity to continue to be played as active characters, depending on the form their madness takes. The character may still attempt to stumble madly through the rest of an adventure. However, with her weakened grasp on reality, she is most likely a danger to herself and others . . . though fun as hell to play.
Characters suffering from indefinite insanity are in limbo, unable to help themselves or others. The Heal skill can be used to restore Sanity points during this period, but the underlying insanity remains.
After recovery, a victim retains definite traces of madness. For example, even though a character knows he is no longer insane, she might be deathly afraid of going to sleep if her insanity manifested itself in the form of terrifying nightmares. The character is in control of her actions, but the experience of insanity has changed her, perhaps forever.
Permanent Insanity
A character whose Sanity score falls to -10 goes permanently insane. The character becomes an NPC under the control of the Game Master.
A character with permanent insanity may be reduced to a raving lunatic or may be outwardly indistinguishable from a normal person; either way, she is inwardly corrupted by the pursuit of knowledge and power. Some of the most dangerous cultists in the world are characters who have become permanently insane, been corrupted by forbidden knowledge, and “gone over to the other side.”
A character who has gone permanently insane can never be normal again. She is forever lost in her own world. This need not mean a lifetime locked away from society, merely that the character has retreated so far from reality that normal mental functions can never be restored. She might be able to lead, within restricted bounds, a more or less normal life if kept away from the stimulus that triggers strong responses in her individual case. Yet a relapse may come quickly. Her calm facade can be destroyed in seconds if even the smallest reminder of what it was that drove her mad disturbs her fragile equilibrium. In any event, the eventual fate of a permanently insane character is a matter for individual Game Masters and players to decide.
Gaining Or Recovering Sanity
A character’s Sanity score can increase during the events of a campaign.
Level Advancement
A character’s current Sanity can become higher than her starting Sanity as a result of gained levels: Whenever a character gains a new level, she rolls 1d6 and adds the result to her current Sanity.
Story Awards
The GM may also decide to award increases in character’s current Sanity if they foil a great horror, a demonic plan, or some other nefarious enterprise.
The Heal Skill And Mental Treatment
The Sanity rules presented here provide a new use for the Heal skill, allowing trained healers to help characters recover lost Sanity points. The DC and effect of a Heal check made to restore lost Sanity depend on whether the therapist is trying to offer immediate care or long-term care.
Immediate Care
When someone suffers an episode of temporary insanity, a therapist can bring him out of it—calming his terror, snapping him out of his stupor, or doing whatever else is needed to restore the patient to the state she was in before the temporary insanity—by making a DC 15 Heal check as a full-round action.
A therapist can also use immediate care to stabilize the Sanity score of a character whose current Sanity is between -1 and -9. On a successful DC 15 check (requiring a full-round action), the character’s Sanity score improves to 0.
Long-Term Care
Providing long-term care means treating a mentally disturbed person for a day or more in a place away from stress and distractions. A therapist must spend 1d4 hours per day doing nothing but talking to the patient. If the therapist makes a DC 20 Heal check at the end of this time, the patient recovers 1 Sanity point. A therapist can tend up to six patients at a time; each patient beyond the first adds 1 hour to the total time per day that must be devoted to therapy. The check must be made each day for each patient. A roll of 1 on any of these Heal checks indicates that the patient loses 1 point of Sanity that day, as she regresses mentally due to horrors suddenly remembered.
#3
Posted 18 January 2010 - 05:33 PM
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The Zombies (Zeds):
They are "typical" zombies in most senses.
-They are instinctual and so far have exhibited no signs of real intelligence. Your characters doubt very seriously that they could open something complex like a car door, but they might, while flailing away, manage to get a regular door open . . . though they are far more likely to just smash it until it or they break. Driving a car, firing a gun, or even working a flashlight is completely out of the question as far as anyone knows.
-The only known way to "kill" a zombie is massive brain damage or severing the head from the body completely. A bullet to the head usually does quite nicely. In game terms we are going to represent this by a high AC and low HPs for the Zeds. Hitting them in the head is hard and it is all that matters, but a hit to the head is nearly always fatal to the walking dead.
-They can run as fast as a human body in their current state of decay, so it varies. They are not the manic, run run run zombies of the 28 Days/Weeks Later franchise. They are mostly all lumbering, clumsy traditional zombies, but freshly risen Zeds are capable of surprising bursts of speed under certain circumstances.
They are "typical" zombies in most senses.
-They are instinctual and so far have exhibited no signs of real intelligence. Your characters doubt very seriously that they could open something complex like a car door, but they might, while flailing away, manage to get a regular door open . . . though they are far more likely to just smash it until it or they break. Driving a car, firing a gun, or even working a flashlight is completely out of the question as far as anyone knows.
-The only known way to "kill" a zombie is massive brain damage or severing the head from the body completely. A bullet to the head usually does quite nicely. In game terms we are going to represent this by a high AC and low HPs for the Zeds. Hitting them in the head is hard and it is all that matters, but a hit to the head is nearly always fatal to the walking dead.
-They can run as fast as a human body in their current state of decay, so it varies. They are not the manic, run run run zombies of the 28 Days/Weeks Later franchise. They are mostly all lumbering, clumsy traditional zombies, but freshly risen Zeds are capable of surprising bursts of speed under certain circumstances.
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